A start-to-finish walkthrough of automatically assigning incoming chats — plus SLA tracking, priority ordering, and troubleshooting a rule that isn’t firing.
Before You Start, Make Sure You Have
- At least one agent or team set up, if your rule is going to assign chats automatically.
- Decided roughly what should trigger the rule — a new conversation, a returning reply, or something more specific like an SLA breach.
- Permission to manage automation on this account.
Which Mode Do You Need?
Chat Routing has four modes — this guide is specifically for the fourth one. Here’s how to tell if that’s actually what you need.
| Mode | What It Does | Do You Need Rules for This? |
|---|---|---|
| Manual | Nothing happens automatically — your team picks up new chats themselves. | No – this is the default, no setup needed. |
| Round Robin | Each new chat goes to the next agent in line, so everyone gets a fair share. | No – just select this mode, you’re done. |
| Circular | Same as Round Robin, but restarts at agent 1 once everyone’s had a turn. | No – just select this mode; you’re done. |
| Routing Rules | You define conditions (“VIP customers,” “outside business hours,” “SLA breached”) and what should happen for each. Anything more specific than simple fair distribution. | Yes – continue below. |
If simple fair distribution is genuinely all you need, select Round Robin or Circular under Routing mode, and you’re finished — no rules to build. Keep reading only if you need chats routed conditionally.
Before You Switch Modes –Only one mode is active at a time. If you’re currently on Round Robin or Circular and it’s working fine, switching to Routing Rules changes how every incoming chat gets distributed the moment you switch — make sure you have at least one rule built and active first, or chats may go unassigned in the gap.
Follow Simple Steps:
1. Turn on Routing Rules Mode
Go to Automation → Chat Routing Rule → Routing Rules. At the top, under Routing mode, select Routing Rules.
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Easy To Miss – Rules only run while this mode is selected. If you build rules under any other mode, you’ll see a banner reminding you they’re paused — building the rule doesn’t activate it by itself.
2. Start a New Rule
Click + New Rule. Give it a name that describes what it does — e.g. “VIP customers to Priya” — then choose a trigger under When this happens. For a first rule, New conversation starts is the simplest choice.
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3. Add a Condition (Optional)
Under Conditions, click + Add condition to narrow down which chats this rule applies to — for example, Contact tag contains VIP. Leave this section empty if you want the rule to run every time the trigger fires, with no filtering.
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4. Add an Action
Under Then do this, click + Add action and choose Assign to agent (or Assign to team). Pick who it should go to.
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Before You Activate –Double-check every action has its fields filled in. A rule can be saved and switched to “Active” even if the agent field is empty — it just won’t do anything when it runs, with no warning shown.
5. Test It
In the right-hand panel, use Verify before you save: enter a customer’s phone number and click Run test. You’ll see whether the rule would match, with a pass/fail breakdown of each condition — nothing is sent or changed.
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What This Test Doesn’t Cover –The test only confirms your conditions match the right chats — it previews which actions would run but doesn’t execute them. It won’t catch an action with a missing field the way sending a real message would, so still double-check your action fields manually.
6. Save and Activate
Toggle Rule active on, then click Save rule. Your rule now appears in the rules list and starts running on incoming chats immediately.
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Setting Up an SLA Policy
Track response-time targets so you know when a chat is at risk of breaching, before it happens.
1. Create The Policy
Go to SLA Policies and click + New Policy. Name it, then set at least one target: First response time (FRT), Next response time (NRT), or Time to close (TTC), plus a Warning threshold (%) for when a chat should turn “At Risk.”
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2. Apply It
Either turn on Set as account default to apply it to every chat automatically, or leave it off and apply it selectively using the Apply SLA policy action on a specific routing rule.
Easy to Miss –Without a default policy, chats are only tracked if a rule explicitly applies one. If your SLA reports look empty, this is usually why.
Understanding Rule Order & Priority
The single most common cause of “my rule isn’t doing what I expected.”
Rules run top to bottom on the Routing Rules list — the first rule that matches a chat handles it, and every rule below it is skipped for that chat, unless the matching rule has “Keep checking other rules after this matches” turned on.
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To reorder, drag a rule using the handle on the left of its row. Put your more specific rules (e.g., “VIP + India”) above general ones (e.g., “any new conversation”) — otherwise the specific rule may never get a turn, because the general one above it already caught the chat.
Why isn’t My Rule Running?
Work through this checklist in order — it covers nearly every real cause.
Is your account actually in Routing Rules mode, not Manual, Round Robin, or Circular?
Is the rule’s Active toggle on? Does a rule above it in the list also match the same chats, catching them first?
Does a rule above it in the list also match the same chats, catching them
first?
Does every action on the rule have its required fields filled in (e.g., an agent actually selected)?
Open Reports → Rule performance — if the rule shows “Never matched,” its trigger or conditions are likely too narrow, or never actually reached.
What Happens Next
- Every match, skip, and action is logged — check Reports any time to see match rates per rule, agent workload, and SLA performance.
- Come back and add more rules, more conditions, or more actions as you learn what you actually need — nothing here needs to be perfect on the first pass.
